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Black College Students Face Crisis of Moral Purpose

By Robert M. Franklin
Black College Wire

Emory University Robert M. Franklin

During my freshman year at Morehouse College, I was shocked to discover more than a few brothers who were not serious about learning and community service.

Weren't we all here, after all, to take up and continue Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s unfinished mission? It did not take long to identify the smaller percentage of the student body that seemed to appreciate the privilege of this experience. At a time when many young men our age were being drafted into the military and shipped to Vietnam, and with the echo of the tumultuous decade of the '60s still ringing in our ears, here were Morehouse men behaving like the stereotypical frat boys of the leisure class.

They partied all night, smuggled women into the dormitories, consumed drugs and engaged in fights against rival schools as well as young men in the surrounding neighborhood. After uproarious weekends, these same young men would sleep late into Sunday afternoons. The small number of us who were up for Sunday worship services walked through dorm halls that resembled deathly quiet catacombs, tombs of the purposeless.

It would not be fair to simply indict these students as purposeless without noting that their previous schools, the larger society and its most visible leaders share in the failure to inspire and challenge young people to discover and embrace higher purposes. At a time when the "culture of narcissism" was and is corrupting and destroying a culture of civic virtue and public service, students may be up against much larger cultural forces than they can oppose without support.

This is where the entire culture of black colleges must be mobilized to instill virtues like personal sacrifice for the greater good. This is precisely what Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne, W.E.B. Du Bois, Mary McLeod Bethune, Mordecai Wyatt Johnson and Benjamin Mays sought to promote.

Mays, who as Morehouse president from 1940 to 1967 was one of the most extraordinary and influential black college presidents of the 20th century, noted that there have always been some college students who were "not with the program."

And it seems naive and unrealistic to suggest that college students should not enjoy their time in school. On weekends, I partied with the best of them on campus and had a great time. Party culture and frivolity are and always will be a part of the college experience of testing the limits of increased freedom and autonomy from parents.

But in recent years, I have become more profoundly disturbed by what appears to be a deeper crisis of moral purpose among contemporary black college students.

With the possible exception of explicit religious colleges, campus cultures of indulgence are a fact of life, but I think that we are witnessing a lowering of the threshold of appropriate behavior that is contrary to the liberating purposes of education.

Consider these examples. First, during the 1990s and for several years thereafter, black college and high school students gathered in Atlanta each spring break for a rolling street festival known as "Freaknik."

The event involved cruising along the city's busiest streets and highways in amazing vehicles that no student should have been able to afford. I wondered, "Where'd they get the money? Did they also receive financial aid?"

Often, the cars stopped and people jumped out to dance in the street to the thunderous tones of the car stereo or play musical chairs as they jumped into a different vehicle to make new friends and who knows what else?

As the practice grew, it began to alienate Atlanta's white and black middle classes, who demanded that the mayor halt the practice. I recall discussing the issue with other Atlanta University Center presidents at our monthly Presidents Council. In our wisdom, we thought that if our schools sponsored official concerts, we could get the students off the streets, out of the cars and onto our campuses. Wrong!

We failed to understand that part of the power of the Freaknik phenomenon and hip-hop culture in general was that it was student generated, semi-spontaneous, and resistant to being packaged for adult control and satisfaction. We have seen a similar phenomenon in the growing popularity of blogging, instant message word-of-mouth advertising, and virus marketing. This may be an important lesson for the village as it seeks to mobilize these same young people to serve village renewal purposes.

Eventually, Atlanta's mayor (Bill Campbell) came down on Freaknik and the official event migrated to Daytona Beach. But much of the wild party culture of violence and aggressive sexuality remained lodged in Atlanta campuses and elsewhere.

The second event was the tragic and much-publicized violent attack by a Morehouse College student toward another student whom he accused of staring at him in the shower. This case received national attention as the issue of black homophobia, the extent of Morehouse's black gay culture, and the school's commitment to protecting the rights of all students came under intense scrutiny.

During the same period, Morehouse's Center for Ethical Leadership, led by theologian Walter Fluker, convened a meeting to promote the idea of ethical leaders. In his presentation, Morehouse alumnus John Wilson, a senior administrator at George Washington University, suggested that the college was not sufficiently intentional and aggressive about its mission to inculcate values in students and that it might be losing its esteem in the eye of the larger village.

Following the crisis surrounding the campus attack, Morehouse president Walter Massey convened a "blue ribbon committee" that included Harvard University minister Peter Gomes and diversity expert Dr. Roosevelt Thomas. The group studied and discussed the examples of other institutions that have grappled with the issues of respecting sexual diversity on campus, and issued a report that has led to a new emphasis on tolerance during the new student orientation. The attacker continues to serve his sentence and, in 2006, he and his victim met in court for a hearing to reduce the sentence.

Despite the school's many constructive steps to prevent future student and sexual violence, the fact that one student could beat a fellow student with a baseball bat suggests that a new culture of violence has seeped into the hallowed halls of learning.

Subsequently, additional incidents of violence, murder and rape surfaced in the Atlanta University Center that underscored the presence of a new "thug" and "gangsta" subculture on many campuses. This subculture must be challenged and rooted out lest the public lose good will and confidence in black schools. These negative behaviors must not be excused or tolerated. They threaten the very future of the institutions that the village needs for its health.

The challenge both to the colleges and to the village is how we can transform the culture of purposelessness and redirect those energies into village renewal. The key to repairing the problems inside HBCUs lies in reaching and nurturing children long before they graduate from high school. Purposeless college students probably didn't acquire the bad habits when they arrived on campus, they brought them along.

Therefore, schools must become centers for both intellectual and character development. Every school.

This is an edited excerpt from "Crisis in the Village: Restoring Hope in African American Communities" by Robert M. Franklin. Copyright 2007 Fortress Press. Franklin, distinguished professor of social ethics at Emory University, is the incoming president of Morehouse College. From 1997 to 2002, Franklin was president of the Interdenominational Theological Center, the graduate theological seminary consortium at the Atlanta University Center. To comment, e-mail .

Posted June 2, 2007

Discuss the Great Things HBCUs Provide

Wake up, this not just a HBCU problem. These things happen on traditionally white campuses as well, but these institutions have the resources in place not to let the information get out, so stop the HBCU bashing. If one really wants to solve the issue and make a difference, stand up and do something positive in the community, starting with the early-age youth. Spend more time and effort discussing the great things that these institutions provide. along with the major roles that their graduate play in society.

Bro. Jay Blankenship
Kappa Gamma Gamma Chapter
Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc.
www.omegakgg.com
Anderson, S.C.
June 5, 2007

Crisis Is Part of Fiber of Black Community

The crisis of moral purpose in the black community, unfortunately, extends far beyond Morehouse or black colleges. It is part of the fiber of the black community, tightly interwoven with the greed that permeates all of America today. But for us it's much more vicious and dangerous, and it's killing our children, many of them our finest and brightest.

Unless the so-called black middle class reclaims its blackness, we can forget about Martin's dream of the blessed community and continue to wallow in the pit of violence, materialism and escapism that we are allowing ourselves to be buried in. We must reclaim the dream and try to truly understand what Martin meant when he said "community or chaos." Thank you, Dr. Franklin; my prayers are with you, and us.

E. G. Bowles
New York
June 6, 2007